My headache is a dull pulsing today, and even though I’ve been running for thirty minutes, no endorphins have shown up yet. Still, I keep going. The burning in my muscles feels like a way to drain myself of this toxic energy.
Two of the dogs run up to me as I turn for the driveway to the house, but the third one is nowhere to be seen. I stop and look around. The two at my feet are panting and looking up at me, and I have no idea who is who.
“Uno,” I yell. The smaller one at my side perks up.
“Dos,” I yell. The smaller at my side perks up again.
The other one completely ignores me both times. Great.
“C’mon, boy,” I yell, looking around. I start clapping and whistling and making it sound like this is the best place to be. “Good boy,” I coo at the ones at my feet even though they’ve done nothing. They both wag their nonexistent tails. “Let’s go!” I yell in a high-pitched voice.
Something cracks in the woods nearest the driveway.
“C’mon, boy,” I yell again, but no dog emerges.
My annoyance starts shifting to panic quickly. This is not good. I should have put their stupid leashes on. I walk up to the house, and the dogs race in when I open the door by the mudroom. I shut the door behind them before they can dart back out; then I walk to the last garage bay, where the utility vehicle is kept. I open the garage door and crank up the 4x4. Its loud engine roars, and I work it into reverse and back out. Like muscle memory, driving this thing comes back to me in fluid motions. No power steering, so I yank the steering wheel in thedirection of the woods. The UTV lurches forward, and I drive it along the woods, calling for the dog. Nothing.
I ease along until I spot a narrow opening, one larger than a typical trail. I kill the engine and call for the dog again. This time something jingles in the woods. A second later, a small animal that looks very much like one of my father’s dogs walks out of the woods covered from his head to his tail in mud.
“Great. Get over here,” I say, and the dog bounds toward me, his collar jingling as he jumps in the 4x4. He looks up at me with one blue eye and one brown. “Dos,” I say, snapping my fingers, and he wags his whole body.
I glance past him at the road and notice something else. Something in the mud. I climb out and crouch down to get a better look. Tire tracks. What the hell?
I stand up and look back at the house, specifically the second-floor window. My window. I want to tell myself I’m being paranoid, but the headlights I thought I saw the other night, the way I felt followed after leaving Poison Wood have the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.
I jump back in the UTV and steer away from the house and onto the muddy road with the tire marks. Branches smack the sides as I bounce down it. Someone’s car would be quite scratched up after this journey. The trail stops at an old, rusted barbed wire fence with a metal gate. A gate that is sitting open.
I hop out and shut it, but there’s no way to lock it. That’s going to change today.
The acid in my stomach is roiling as I park back in the garage and get Dos to the laundry room. His brothers yap and pounce on him when we come through the door. And by the time I’m done washing him off and cleaning his collar in the laundry sink, I’m as wet as he is. I dry him the best I can, and he takes off, zooming around the house with the other two in tow.
In the kitchen, Debby is working on a crossword puzzle at the table.
“Is he still sleeping?” I say.
She shakes her head. “Bunchin’ a fire.”
I sigh. He’s definitely got something on his mind. Bunching a fire was a constant on this land as a kid. Storms are also a constant in Louisiana: tornadoes, straight-line winds, derechos, and even a hurricane made it this far north once, all leaving a swath of downed trees in their wake. Trees that needed to be moved and piled up and turned into bonfires that could probably be seen from space. My father’s way of cleaning up and keeping order.
The day of my mother’s funeral, my father brought me home, took off his tie, and climbed up in his bulldozer in his suit and didn’t come back until well after dark. My uncles made me dinner, and I went to bed and watched my father from my upstairs window. The lights from his truck directed at a burning pile of downed trees. The beeping of the dozer as he’d back up and then move forward, pushing more dead trees onto the pyre. Sparks raced upward into the dark sky, then disappeared, and I wondered if my mother was looking down and catching those sparks as they flew up to her.
I pour a cup of coffee from the cold carafe and heat it in the microwave. I wanted to come down this morning and slap that open envelope on the table and tell my father to start talking. But I put on running shoes instead. Rushing into this with him may not be the best approach, even though it’s my usual approach. But nothing feels usual anymore.
I take my coffee and head for my room. I need to take the folders and journals to Erin tonight. I’m going to have to let them go. But as I pass my father’s study door, I pause.
If I was going to hide something—say, something from an envelope not addressed to me—this would be as good a spot as any. I turn the knob and step inside.
Winter light fills the room, coming through the French doors on the opposite wall. The pile of mail still sits on the desk where I dropped it. I move around to the back side and survey the desk, my gaze falling on a keypad on the bottom right drawer.
I sit in my father’s large leather chair but only pause for a second. Although guilt is a powerful motivator, it’s not powerful enough to stop me from looking through this desk for whatever could have been in that envelope. And I know right where to start. I type the code into the keypad on the bottom drawer and yank it open.
I’ve done a lot of things to get information over the years, but until coming back here, I’ve never crossed lines like this to get it. First, I crossed the police tape at Poison Wood, and now this. It’s as if just being in close proximity to that school has unearthed all the bad behavior I learned within its walls.
The drawer’s contents surprise me. It’s filled with my mother’s things: a denim shirt, paintbrushes, perfume bottles. I pick up one of the slender, curvy bottles, Giorgio Beverly Hills.
My father has filed her away as well.
“Oh, Dad,” I say to the quiet study.
